


in the dark

by Aisu



Category: Cookie Run (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, god i hate that i'm tagging a cookie fic angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22311532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aisu/pseuds/Aisu
Summary: Blueberry Pie Cookie is a diligent archivist and keeps the archives in the best of repair.This leaves her a great deal of time to think.Exploring how a dutiful, loyal, and obedient part of the City of Wizards became a cursed fragment many years later.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 21





	in the dark

The archives are kept dark, by necessity. The books and scrolls stored there all have their own sensitivities, along with the mundane weakness of paper against the fading effects of the sunlight. If she is heading into the deeper stacks, she does so with a faint light held in her hand, the magic barely doing anything against the gloom.

But still, slivers of the city's bright, endless moonlight sneak in through the narrow windows, through the cracks in the door.

Sometimes, when her duties do not call her away, she sits and watches them track their paths across the floor.

One falls across her face, once, and despite knowing it's impossible, she could swear the touch is warm.

\---

The position of archivist is an honorable one. Candidates - young, always young - are chosen by inclination, by skill, by fate. They put her through tests of her diligence and her dedication; they have her seal tomes, crafting sigils and writing out wards; they draw out her star charts and pore over every flaw written in her fate.

(There is a darkness in her chart, a curl that does not fit, that cuts a cruel swath through the twists of fate - but then, that is true for the rest of the candidates, as well. She finds the charts filed away many years later, and goes through them one by one, wondering what the seers thought.)

She is chosen, and it is a surprise, if a welcome one, because while she is diligent, and dedicated, and meticulous, her spells fail her often and her charms are far weaker than some of the candidates.

Shyly, when the ceremony is done and she has sworn her oaths and made her promises, she asks the old archivist - why her? Why her, when she is far from the best of the candidates?

Zhe smiles at her, tiredly, and offers her the key to the doors.

"They never wanted the best," zhe says. "The best would be tempted."

And then zhe walks away, and she is left to look through the Archive that will be her home for decades to come.

She does not understand for some time.

\---

It takes her one hour and sixteen minutes to complete a routine walkthrough and inspection, if no problems are found. She does inspections three times daily - at moonrise, at midnight, at moonset. Fixing broken seals and refreshing wards takes another forty minutes, on average. Helping people find what they are looking for takes a maximum of fifteen minutes.

Eating her simple meals, brought to her from outside, does not take enough time. Neither does sleep. She finds books that are not sealed or warded, reads through them one by one, but as much as she tries to pace herself, she reads too quickly, losing book after book to the stack of those she has already read.

Pacing the archives aimlessly occupies two hours (average). Watching the moonlight occupies one hour (until it is out of sight). Staring out at the city through the sliver-thin windows is nearly impossible. 

It isn't too long before she finds herself wandering, more and more often, towards the forbidden sections.

\---

It is not the role of the archivist to know the contents of the books they protect. They are the librarian, not the library; beyond knowing the general shape of the spells that fill the books, so that they can guide people, they do not need to know more.

Knowing more would be a danger, after all. So much of the knowledge stored there is forbidden, warded with curses and with ill fate, sealed away from all but the greatest magicians.

She understands, at last, one day, as she looks through the cases at the books in their seals, what the old archivist had meant.

This is the last quality of an archivist, the one they did not tell her in lectures and lessons and rules and restrictions. The one that ensures she will do her duty and no more, that ensures that she will not even think of testing the wards to see what great knowledge lies beneath.

Humility, perhaps, they'd call it.

(Or anxiety, she thinks, and her brief laugh is heard by nothing that can respond.)

She checks the seals and wards, and she walks away from the tomes again.

\---

There are more visitors, lately.

She guides each in turn to the sections they need. Books of omen and prophecy; grimoires laying out spells to form wards and barriers; records of past calamities.

She does not ask questions, just guides them, alone or in murmuring groups. Even when she leads city leaders and great wizards down winding passageways towards the cases of glass and crystal and chocolate and ivory; even when she helps them to lift the seals and lift out books and scrolls bound closed and watches them walk away with them.

They do not speak to her, beyond their requests. She does not speak to them, beyond the information they need.

It is not the role of the archivist to ask questions.

Especially ones she suspects she knows the answers to.

\---

There is one book no wizard ever takes.

The tome is a surprisingly humble one; while seals are affixed to hold it closed, and it is in one of the transparent cases, the cover is just blank tan leather in braided strips, the bindings held with deep blue clips. There is no title, no author. It is tucked into a corner, the case seemingly dusty no matter what she does.

She visits it more and more often, coming to clean the case until it shines, to look at that blank cover, to wonder. She has searched through the indexes and inventories, but she cannot find any record of its contents.

It is alone; it is forgotten. Whatever knowledge it holds - mundane or dangerous, cursed or benign - it will go unknown, under its seals, under the role that fate has given it.

It is not very responsive company. But it does prove to be an excellent listener.

\---

The sky is dark, sometimes, now. The moonlight, that bright glow once untouchable by clouds or shadows, simply seems to disappear. She learns to do her work only in the flickering glow of her spell, and she asks nothing.

The earth rumbles sometimes, for minutes at a time. It knocks her to the floor more than once, cowering as the earth shakes beneath her feet. When it is over, she gets up, and she returns books to shelves and checks seals for any new damage, and she asks nothing.

The visitors who come look more and more harried, more and more exhausted. They come in small groups, talking quietly to each other, turning to more and more tightly bound tomes, showing her paperwork signed in the hasty hands of the Council of Sages. She nods, and she asks nothing.

Even if she knew, there is nothing she could do.

She has no secret knowledge they do not already know.

Until.

Until the moonlight goes dark, one night, and the earth rumbles like a warning, and before she knows what she is doing she is following the wisp-glow back through the corridors, back towards that room tucked away from everything, back to that case in the corner with its blank tome.

(After it is over, she will play this moment again and again, a hundred times, a thousand times, trying to piece together why. The part of her that was dedicated, loyal, devoted whispers that she hoped that in this tome, forgotten by everyone, she could have found some answer, some secret that would put the world to rights. The part of her that held to pride whispers that she had thought she could have singlehandedly mastered some forbidden power and proven herself to the wizards, proved herself worthy to help in preventing the city's slow fall.)

(When she is honest with herself, she admits that she just wanted to make any choice at all.)

She breaks the seals, and she lifts the lid, and she takes hold of the tome.

In turn, it takes hold of her.

\---

The archives are kept dark, by necessity. Any spells that might have provided a constant light are long since gone, lost with those who might have wielded them. She makes her endless rounds by gloomy wisp-light, light held in one hand and tome in the other.

But still, slivers of the city's ebbing, unsteady moonlight sneak in through the narrow windows, through the cracks in the door.

She watches them, but she stays out of their path, carefully never letting any of them brush her for even a moment.

It would hardly do for the property of the archives to be damaged by the light.

**Author's Note:**

> what's up y'all i'm airis and apparently now i'm sad about fictional cookies
> 
> huge thanks go out to venus and the entire OF cookie run group


End file.
